conspiracy theories: causes and cures* - skeptiker schweiz · pragmatically, that a conspiracy...

Symposium on Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures*

Cass R. SunsteinLaw, Harvard University

and

Adrian VermeuleLaw, Harvard University

“THE truth is out there”:1 conspiracy theories are all around us. In August2004, a poll by Zogby International showed that 49 percent of New York

City residents, with a margin of error of 3.5 percent, believed that officialsof the U.S. government “knew in advance that attacks were planned on oraround September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.”2 In aScripps-Howard Poll in 2006, some 36 percent of respondents assented to theclaim that “federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World TradeCenter or took no action to stop them.”3 Sixteen percent said that it was eithervery likely or somewhat likely that “the collapse of the twin towers in New Yorkwas aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings.”4

Conspiracy theories can easily be found all over the world. Amongsober-minded Canadians, a September 2006 poll found that 22 percent believedthat “the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 had nothing to dowith Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential Americans.”5 In apoll conducted in seven Muslim countries, 78 percent of respondents said thatthey do not believe the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Arabs.6 The most popular

*Thanks to Gabriella Blum, Mark Fenster, Don Herzog, Orin Kerr, Eric Posner, Andrei Shleifer,Mark Tushnet, and this journal’s referees for valuable comments, and to Joel Peters-Fransen andElisabeth Theodore for excellent research assistance.

1This slogan was popularized by the television show “The X-Files,” ⟨http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files⟩. 9/11 conspiracy theorists often call themselves the “9/11 TruthMovement”; see ⟨http://www.911truth.org⟩.

2Zogby International, “Half of New Yorkers believe US leaders had foreknowledge of impending9-11 attacks and ‘consciously failed to act,’” ⟨http://zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=855⟩,posted Aug. 30, 2004.

3Thomas Hargrove and Guido H. Stempel III, “A third of U.S. public believes 9/11 conspiracytheory,” Scripps Howard News Service, ⟨http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=CONSPIRACY⟩, posted Aug. 2, 2006.

4Ibid.5“One in 5 Canadians sees 9/11 as U.S. plot – poll,” Reuters, Sept. 11, 2006.6Matthew A. Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, “Media, education and anti-Americanism in the

Muslim world,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18 (2004), 117–133.

The Journal of Political Philosophy: Volume 17, Number 2, 2009, pp. 202–227

© 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00325.x

http://en

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http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=

account, in these countries, is that 9/11 was the work of the U.S. or Israeligovernments.7 In China, a bestseller attributes various events (the rise of Hitler,the Asian financial crisis of 1997–1998, and environmental destruction in thedeveloping world) to the Rothschild banking dynasty; the analysis has been readand debated at high levels of business and government, and it appears to havehad an effect on discussions about currency policies.8 Throughout Americanhistory, race-related violence has often been spurred by false rumors, generallypointing to alleged conspiracies by one or another group.9

What causes such theories to arise and spread? Are they important andperhaps even threatening, or merely trivial and even amusing? What can andshould government do about them? We aim here to sketch some psychologicaland social mechanisms that produce, sustain, and spread these theories; to showthat some of them are quite important and should be taken seriously; and to offersuggestions for governmental responses, both as a matter of policy and as amatter of law.

Most of the academic literature directly involving conspiracy theories falls intoone of two classes: (1) work by analytic philosophers, especially in epistemologyand the philosophy of science, that explores a range of issues but mainlyasks what counts as a “conspiracy theory” and whether such theories aremethodologically suspect;10 (2) a smattering of work in sociology and Freudianpsychology on the causes of conspiracy theorizing.11 We offer some remarks onthe conceptual debates here, but we will generally proceed in pragmatic fashionand mostly from the ground up, hewing close to real examples and the policyproblems they pose. To illuminate issues of policy, we draw upon literatures insocial psychology, economics, and other disciplines concerning informationalcascades, the spread of rumors, and the epistemology of groups and socialnetworks. We adapt the insights of these literatures by focusing on the features of

7Ibid. at p. 120.8See Richard McGregor, “Chinese buy into conspiracy theory,” Financial Times, Sept. 25, 2007,

⟨http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=1907⟩.9See Terry Ann Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots, 2nd edn (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction

Publishers, 2006).10See, e.g., David Coady, ed., Conspiracy Theories: The Philosophical Debate (Aldershot,

Hampshire, England: Ashgate, 2006) and Carl F. Graumann and Serge Moscovici, eds, ChangingConceptions of Conspiracy (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1987).

11There is also a body of work that collects many interesting examples of conspiracy theories, butwithout any sustained analytic approach. See, e.g.: Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) and Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy (New York: Free Press,1997). For a treatment of conspiracy theories from the standpoint of cultural studies, see MarkFenster, Conspiracy Theories (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999). A great deal ofliterature exists on rumors; conspiracy theories can proliferate through rumors, although they neednot do so (consider the conspiracy theories introduced through bestselling books, described above).For the classic treatment of rumor, see Gordon Allport and Leo Postman, The Psychology of Rumor(New York: H. Holt and Company, 1947). Valuable recent discussions include: Nicholas Difonzo andPrashant Bordia, Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches (Washington, DC:American Psychological Association, 2006); and Chip Heath and Veronique Campion-Vincent, eds,Rumor Mills: The Social Impact of Rumor and Legend (New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction,2005). On rumors, conspiracies, and racial violence, see Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES 203

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false and harmful conspiracy theories that make them distinct from, andsometimes more damaging than, other false and harmful beliefs.

Our running example involves conspiracy theories relating to terrorism,especially theories that arose from and post-date the 9/11 attacks.Terrorism-related theories are hardly the only ones of interest, but they providea crucial testing ground for the significance, causes, and policy implicationsof widespread conspiracy theorizing. As we shall see, an understanding ofconspiracy theories illuminates the spread of information and beliefs moregenerally. We shall also see, however, that because of their special characteristics,conspiracy theories pose unique challenges.

Section I explores some definitional issues and lays out some of themechanisms that produce conspiracy theories and theorists. We begin bynarrowing our focus to conspiracy theories that are false, harmful, andunjustified (in the epistemological sense), and by discussing differentunderstandings of the nature of such conspiracy theories and different accountsof the kinds of errors made by those who hold them. Our primary claim is thatthose who hold conspiracy theories of this distinctive sort typically do so not asa result of a mental illness of any kind, or of simple irrationality, but as a resultof a “crippled epistemology,” in the form of a sharply limited number of(relevant) informational sources. In that sense, acceptance of such theories maynot be irrational or unjustified from the standpoint of those who adhere to themwithin epistemologically isolated groups or networks,12 although they areunjustified relative to the information available in the wider society, especially ifit is an open one. There is a close connection, we suggest, between our claim onthis count and the empirical association between terrorist behavior and anabsence of civil rights and civil liberties.13 When civil rights and civil liberties areabsent, people lack multiple information sources, and they are more likely tohave reason to accept conspiracy theories.

Section II discusses government responses and legal issues. We address severaldilemmas of governmental response to false, harmful, and unjustified conspiracytheories. Conspiracy theories turn out to be unusually hard to undermine ordislodge; they have a self-sealing quality, rendering them particularly immune tochallenge. Our principal claim here involves the potential value of cognitiveinfiltration of extremist groups, designed to introduce informational diversityinto such groups and to expose indefensible conspiracy theories as such.

12For a valuable and analogous account of fundamentalist beliefs, see Michael Baurmann,“Rational fundamentalism? An explanatory model of fundamentalist beliefs,” Episteme, 4 (2007),150–66.

13See Alan Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp.75–82. Krueger (p. 148) believes that low civil liberties cause terrorism, but acknowledges that hisdata are also consistent with the hypothesis that terrorism causes governments to reduce civil liberties.Of course, the two effects may both occur, in a mutually reinforcing pattern. Following Krueger, weassume that low civil liberties tend to produce terrorism, a hypothesis that is supported by themechanisms we adduce.

204 CASS R. SUNSTEIN AND ADRIAN VERMEULE

I. DEFINITIONS AND MECHANISMS

A. DEFINITIONAL NOTES

There has been much discussion of what, exactly, counts as a conspiracy theory,and about what, if anything, is wrong with those who hold one. Of course itwould be valuable to specify necessary and sufficient conditions for such theories,in a way that would make it possible to make relevant distinctions. However, thevarious views that people label “conspiracy theories” may well relate to eachother through a family-resemblance structure, such that necessary and sufficientconditions cannot be given even in principle.

We bracket the most difficult conceptual questions here and suggest,pragmatically, that a conspiracy theory can generally be counted as such if it isan effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations ofpowerful people, who attempt to conceal their role (at least until their aims areaccomplished). While many conspiracy theories involve people who are notespecially powerful (friends, neighborhoods, fellow employees, family members,and so forth), this account is the most useful for our particular purposes, and itseems to capture the essence of the most prominent and influential conspiracytheories about public affairs. Consider, for example, the view that the CentralIntelligence Agency was responsible for the assassination of President John F.Kennedy; that doctors deliberately manufactured the AIDS virus; that the 1996crash of TWA flight 800 was caused by a U.S. military missile; that the theoryof global warming is a deliberate fraud; that the Trilateral Commission isresponsible for important movements of the international economy; that MartinLuther King, Jr. was killed by federal agents; that the plane crash that killedDemocrat Paul Wellstone was engineered by Republican politicians; that themoon landing was staged and never actually occurred; that the Rothschilds andother Jewish bankers are responsible for the deaths of presidents and foreconomic distress in Asian nations; and that the Great Depression was a result ofa plot by wealthy people to reduce the wages of workers.14

14See Mark Lane, Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York:Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991) (arguing that it was); Alan Cantwell, AIDS and the Doctors of Death:An Inquiry into the Origins of the AIDS Epidemic (Los Angeles: Aries Rising Press, 1988) (suggestingAIDS was the product of a biowarfare program targeting gay people); Don Phillips, “Missile theoryhaunts TWA investigation; despite lack of evidence and officials’ denials, some insist friendly firecaused crash,” Washington Post, Mar. 14, 1997, p. A03; “Statement of Sen. Inhofe,” CongressionalRecord, 149, S10022 (daily ed. July 28, 2003) (“With all the hysteria, all the fear, all the phonyscience, could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on theAmerican people? I believe it is.”); David Mills, “Beware the Trilateral Commission! The influentialworld panel conspiracy theorists love to hate,” Washington Post, Apr. 25, 1992, p. H1 (describingvarious conspiracy theories about the Commission); William F. Pepper, An Act of State: TheExecution of Martin Luther King (New York: Verso, 2003) (arguing that the military, the CIA, andothers within the government conspired to kill King); Kevin Diaz, “Findings don’t slow conspiracytheories on Wellstone crash; an official investigation has focused on pilot error and weather. Someobservers still have suggested a political plot,” Star Tribune (Minn.), June 3, 2003, p. A1; PattyReinert, “Apollo shrugged: hoax theories about moon landings persist,” Houston Chronicle, Nov. 17,


Of course some conspiracy theories have turned out to be true, and under ourdefinition, they do not cease to be conspiracy theories for that reason.15 TheWatergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact,bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency did, in fact, administer LSD and relateddrugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of“mind control.” Operation Northwoods, a rumored plan by the Department ofDefense to simulate acts of terrorism and to blame them on Cuba, really wasproposed by high-level officials (though the plan never went into effect).16 Ourfocus throughout is on demonstrably false conspiracy theories, such as thevarious 9/11 conspiracy theories, not ones that are true or whose truth isundetermined. Our ultimate goal is to explore how public officials mightundermine such theories, and as a general rule, true accounts should not beundermined.17

Within the set of false conspiracy theories, we also limit our focus topotentially harmful theories. Consider the false conspiracy theory, held by manyof the younger members of our society, that the mysterious “Santa Claus”distributes presents around the world on Christmas Eve. This theory turns outto be false, but is itself instilled through a widespread conspiracy of thepowerful—parents—who conceal their role in the whole affair. It is an openquestion whether most conspiracy theories are equally benign; we will suggestthat some are not benign at all.

Under this account, conspiracy theories are a subset of the larger category of falsebeliefs, and also of the somewhat smaller category of beliefs that are both false andharmful. Consider, for example, the beliefs that prolonged exposure to sunlight isactually healthy, that cigarette smoking does not cause cancer, and that climatechange is neither occurring nor likely to occur. These beliefs are (in our view) bothfalse and dangerous, but as stated, they need not depend on, or posit, any kind ofconspiracy theory. We shall see that the mechanisms that account for conspiracytheories overlap with those that account for false and dangerous beliefs of all sorts,including those that fuel anger and hatred.18 But as we shall also see, conspiracy

2002, p. A1. On the Rothschilds, see McGregor, “Chinese buy into conspiracy theory”; on the GreatDepression, see Allport and Postman, The Psychology of Rumor, p. 517.

15For the point that some conspiracy theories turn out to be true, and several attempts to explorethe philosophical implications of that fact, see Charles Pigden, “Conspiracy theories and theconventional wisdom,” Episteme, 4 (2007), 219–232 and Charles Pidgen, “Complots of mischief,”Conspiracy Theories, ed. Coady, 139–66.

16See Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President’s Men (New York: Simon and Schuster,1974); George Lardner, Jr., and John Jacobs, “Lengthy mind-control research by CIA is detailed,”Washington Post, Aug. 3, 1977, p. A1; “Memorandum from L.L. Lemnitzer, Chairman, Joint Chiefsof Staff, to the Secretary of Defense, Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba,”⟨http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf⟩, posted Mar. 13, 1962.

17We bracket the interesting question whether, on consequentialist grounds, it is ever appropriateto undermine true conspiracy theories.

18See Edward Glaeser, “The political economy of hatred,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 120(2005), 45–86.


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theories have distinctive features, above all because of their self-sealing quality;the very arguments that give rise to them, and account for their plausibility, makeit more difficult for outsiders to rebut or even to question them.

Conspiracy theories often attribute extraordinary powers to certain agents—toplan, to control others, to maintain secrets, and so forth. Those who believe thatthose agents have such powers are especially unlikely to give respectful attentionto debunkers, who may, after all, be agents or dupes of those who are responsiblefor the conspiracy in the first instance. It is comparatively easier for governmentto dispel false and dangerous beliefs that rest, not on a self-sealing conspiracytheory, but on simple misinformation or on an apparent or actual socialconsensus that is fragile and easily “tipped.”19 The most direct governmentaltechnique for dispelling false (and also harmful) beliefs—providing crediblepublic information—does not work, in any straightforward way, for conspiracytheories. This extra resistance to correction through simple techniques is whatmakes conspiracy theories distinctively worrisome.

A further question about conspiracy theories—whether true or false, harmfulor benign—is whether they are justified. Justification and truth are differentissues, which is why pointing out that some conspiracy theories are true does notshow that it is rational to believe in those theories. A true belief may beunjustified, and a justified belief may be untrue. I may believe, correctly, thatthere are fires within the earth’s core, but if I believe that because the god Vulcanrevealed it to me in a dream, my belief is unwarranted. Conversely, the false beliefin Santa Claus is justified, because children generally have good reason to believewhat their parents tell them and follow a sensible heuristic (“if my parents say it,it is probably true”); when children realize that Santa is the product of awidespread conspiracy among parents, they have a justified and true belief that aconspiracy has been at work.

Our final narrowing condition is that we are concerned only with (the many)conspiracy theories that are false, harmful, and unjustified (not in the sense ofbeing irrationally held by those individuals who hold them, but from thestandpoint of the information available in the society as a whole). When andunder what conditions are conspiracy theories unjustified? Here there arecompeting accounts and many controversies, in epistemology and analyticphilosophy.20 We need not opt for only one of these accounts, because they arenot mutually exclusive; each accounts for part of the terrain.

19On the fragility of many cases of apparent social consensus, see Timur Kuran, Private Truths,Public Lies (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995). On the fragility of many cases ofactual social consensus, see David Hirshleifer, “The blind leading the blind: social influence, fads, andinformational cascades,” The New Economics of Human Behavior, ed. Mariano Tommasi andKathryn Ierulli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 188–215.

20For some of the latest philosophical treatments, compare David Coady, “Are conspiracytheorists irrational?” Episteme, 4 (2007), 193–204, with Neil Levy, “Radically socialized knowledgeand conspiracy theories,” Episteme, 4 (2007), 181–92 and Pete Mandik, “Shit happens,” Episteme,4 (2007), 206–18. Roughly speaking, Coady denies that conspiracy theories are generally unjustifiedand (thus) irrational, while Levy and Mandik affirm that they are.


Karl Popper famously argued that conspiracy theories overlook the pervasiveunintended consequences of political and social action; they assume that allconsequences must have been intended by someone.21 Many social effects,including large movements in the economy, occur as a result of the acts andomissions of many people, none of whom intended to cause those effects. Theappeal of some conspiracy theories, then, lies in the attribution of otherwiseinexplicable events to intentional action,22 and to an unwillingness to accept thepossibility that significant adverse consequences may be a product of invisiblehand mechanisms (such as market forces or evolutionary pressures) or of simplechance,23 rather than of anyone’s plans.24

Popper captures an important feature of some conspiracy theories. There is apervasive human tendency to think that effects are caused by intentional action,especially by those who stand to benefit (the “cui bono?” maxim), and for thisreason conspiracy theories have considerable but unwarranted appeal.25 On onereading of Popper’s account, those who accept conspiracy theories are followinga sensible heuristic, to the effect that consequences are intended; that heuristicoften works well, but it also produces systematic errors, especially in the contextof outcomes that are a product of complex interactions among numerous people.More broadly, Popper is picking up on a general fact about human psychology,which is that most people do not like to believe that significant events werecaused by bad (or good) luck, and much prefer simpler causal stories.26 Inparticular, human “minds protest against chaos,” and people seek to extract ameaning from a bewildering event or situation,27 a meaning that a conspiracymay well supply.

Note, however, that the domain of Popper’s explanation is quite limited. Manyconspiracy theories, including those involving political assassinations and theattacks of 9/11, point to events that are indeed the result of intentional action,and the conspiracy theorists go wrong not by positing intentional actors, but bymisidentifying them. (The theory that Al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 is thusa justified and true conspiracy theory.)

Conspiracy theories that posit machinations by government officials typicallyoverestimate the competence and discretion of officials and bureaucracies, whoare assumed to be able to make and carry out sophisticated secret plans, despiteabundant evidence that in open societies government action does not usually

21See Karl R. Popper, “The conspiracy theory of society,” Conspiracy Theories, ed. Coady, 13–16;see also Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 5th edn (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1966),vol. 2.

22See generally Mandik, “Shit happens.”23See Nassim Taleb, Fooled by Randomness (New York: Texere, 2001).24An illuminating discussion is Edna Ullmann-Margalit, “The invisible hand and the cunning of

reason,” Social Research, 64 (1997), 181–98. We note that Popper’s account has been criticized inmany places. See, for example, Pigden, “Conspiracy theories and the conventional wisdom.”

25Ullmann-Margalit, “The invisible hand and the cunning of reason.”26See Taleb, Fooled by Randomness.27See Allport and Postman, Psychology of Rumor, p. 503.


remain secret for very long.28 Consider all the work that must be done to hide andto cover up the government’s role in producing a terrorist attack on its ownterritory, or in arranging to kill political opponents.

In a closed society, secrets are far easier to keep, and distrust of officialaccounts makes a great deal of sense. In such societies, conspiracy theories areboth more likely to be true and harder to show to be false in light of availableinformation. But when the press is free, and when checks and balances are inforce, it is harder for government to keep nefarious conspiracies hidden for long.These points do not mean that it is logically impossible, even in free societies,that conspiracy theories are true; sometimes they are. But it does mean thatinstitutional checks make it less likely, in such societies, that powerful groups cankeep dark secrets for extended periods, at least if those secrets involve illegal ornefarious conduct. Of course conspiracy theories are widespread even in opensocieties, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France; the onlypoint is that such theories are less likely to be either true or justified in suchsocieties.

An especially useful account suggests that what makes unjustified conspiracytheories unjustified is that those who accept them must also accept a kindof spreading distrust of all knowledge-producing institutions, in a way thatmakes it difficult to believe anything at all.29 To think, for example, thatU.S. government officials destroyed the World Trade Center and then coveredtheir tracks requires an ever-widening conspiracy theory, in which the 9/11Commission, congressional leaders, the FBI, and the media were eitherparticipants in or, at best, dupes of the conspiracy. But anyone who believed thatwould undercut the grounds for many of their other beliefs, which are warrantedonly by trust in the knowledge-producing institutions created by government andsociety. As Robert Anton Wilson notes of the conspiracy theories advanced byHolocaust deniers, “a conspiracy that can deceive us about 6,000,000 deaths candeceive us about anything, and [then] it takes a great leap of faith for HolocaustRevisionists to believe World War II happened at all, or that Franklin Rooseveltdid serve as President from 1933 to 1945, or that Marilyn Monroe was more‘real’ than King Kong or Donald Duck.”30

This is not, and is not be intended to be, a general claim that conspiracytheories are unjustified or unwarranted in all imaginable situations or societies.Much depends on the background state of knowledge-producing institutions. Ifthose institutions are generally trustworthy, in part because they are embedded in

28See, e.g., James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush lets U.S. spy on callers without courts,” NewYork Times, Dec. 16, 2005, p. A1; Jane Mayer, “The black sites: a rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secretinterrogation program,” New Yorker, Aug. 13, 2007, p. 46.

29Brian L. Keeley, “Of conspiracy theories,” Conspiracy Theories, ed. Coady, pp. 45–60 at pp. 46,56–7. Keeley’s argument has been the subject of much debate and controversy. For references, and anuanced defense-cum-critique of Keeley’s theory, see Juha Räikkä, “On political conspiracy theories,”Journal of Political Philosophy, this issue.

30Quoted in Keeley, “Of conspiracy theories,” p. 57.


an open society with a well-functioning marketplace of ideas and free flow ofinformation, and if it is difficult to dupe many diverse institutions simultaneously(as the 9/11 conspiracy theories require), then conspiracy theories will usuallybe unjustified. On the other hand, individuals in societies with systematicallymalfunctioning or skewed institutions of knowledge—say, individuals who live inan authoritarian regime lacking a free press—may have good reason to distrustall or most of the official denials they hear. For these individuals, conspiracytheories will more often be warranted, whether or not true.

Likewise, individuals embedded in isolated groups or small, self-enclosednetworks who are exposed only to skewed information will more often holdconspiracy theories that are justified, relative to their limited informationalenvironment.31 Holocaust denials might themselves be considered in this light.When epistemologically isolated groups operate within a society that is bothwider and more open, their theories may be unjustified from the standpoint of thewider society but justified from the standpoint of the individual or group. In thesesituations, the problem for the wider society is to breach the informationalisolation of the small group or network (a problem we discuss below).

On our account, a central feature of conspiracy theories is that they areextremely resistant to correction, certainly through direct denials orcounterspeech by government officials; apparently contrary evidence can usuallybe shown to be a product of the conspiracy itself. Conspiracy theories oftendisplay the characteristic features of a “degenerating research program”32 inwhich contrary evidence is explained away by adding epicycles and resistingfalsification of key tenets.33 Some epistemologists argue that this resistance tofalsification is not objectionable if one also believes that there are conspiratorsdeliberately attempting to plant evidence that would falsify the conspiracy theory,thereby covering their tracks.34 However that may be as a philosophical matter,the self-sealing quality of conspiracy theories creates severe practical problemsfor government; direct attempts to dispel the theory can usually be folded into thetheory itself, as just one more ploy by powerful conspiracy members.

So far we have discussed some epistemological features of conspiracy theories,in the abstract; narrowed our focus to conspiracy theories that are false, harmful,and unjustified from the standpoint of the wider society (although they may bejustified from the standpoint of individuals, given the information they havereceived, or within the closed epistemological network of the conspiracytheorists); and suggested institutional grounds for thinking that in a free and

31Compare Baurman, “Rational fundamentalism?”32Imre Lakatos, “Falsification and methodology of scientific research programmes,” Criticism and

the Growth of Knowledge, ed. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1970), pp. 91–196. Steve Clarke, “Conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorizing,” ConspiracyTheories, ed. Coady, pp. 77–92 at p. 78.

33See Diana G. Tumminia, When Prophecy Never Fails: Myth and Reality in a Flying-SaucerGroup (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

34Keeley, “Of conspiracy theories,” pp. 55–6.


open society, there is usually good reason to believe that most conspiracy theorieswill lack adequate justification. We now turn to the sociology of conspiracytheorizing, examining the mechanisms by which such theories arise andexpand.

B. HOW CONSPIRACY THEORIES ARISE AND SPREAD

i. Crippled Epistemologies

Why do people accept conspiracy theories that turn out to be false and for whichthe evidence is weak or even nonexistent? It is tempting to answer in terms ofindividual pathology, either literal or metaphorical.35 Perhaps conspiracy theoriesare a product of mental illness, such as paranoia or narcissism, or of similarconditions. And surely some people who accept conspiracy theories are mentallyill and subject to delusions.36 But we have seen that in many communities andeven nations, such theories are widely held. It is not plausible to suggest that allor most members of those communities are afflicted by mental illness; themetaphor of mental illness itself obscures more than it clarifies. The mostimportant conspiracy theories are hardly limited to those who suffer from anykind of pathology.

For our purposes, the most useful way to understand the pervasiveness ofconspiracy theories is to examine how people acquire their beliefs.37 For most ofwhat they believe that they know, human beings lack personal or directinformation; they must rely on what other people think. In some domains, peoplesuffer from a “crippled epistemology,” in the sense that they know very fewthings, and what they know is wrong.38 Many extremists fall in this category;their extremism stems not from irrationality, but from the fact that they havelittle (relevant) information, and their extremist views are supported by what

35See Richard Hofstadter, “The paranoid style in American politics,” The Paranoid Style inAmerican Politics and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979); Robert S. Robinsand Jerold M. Post, Political Paranoia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997). Another commonidea treats conspiracy theories as a form of collective paranoid delusion. See, e.g., Deiter Groh, “Thetemptation of conspiracy theory,” Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy, ed. Graumann andMoscovici, pp. 1–38. Our suggestion is that the lens of psychopathology is not helpful, whether it isinterpreted in individual or collective terms.

36See Erich Wulff, “Paranoic conspiratory delusion,” Changing Conceptions of Conspiracy, ed.Graumann and Moscovici, pp. 171–90.

37There is an immense and growing literature on this question, not exploring conspiracy theories,but with obvious relevance to them. For examples, with relevant citations, see Sendhil Mullainathanand Andrei Shleifer, “The market for news,” The American Economic Review, 95 (2005), 1031–54;Edward Glaeser and Cass R. Sunstein, “Extremism and social learning,” Journal of Legal Analysis,forthcoming 2008.

38Russell Hardin, “The crippled epistemology of extremism,” Political Extremism andRationality, ed. Albert Breton, Gianluigi Galeotti, Pierre Salmon, and Ronald Wintrobe (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 3–22 at pp. 16 ff. Of course we do not deny that someextremism is justified and that the beliefs that underlie extremism may be true.


little they know.39 Conspiracy theorizing often has the same feature. Those whobelieve that Israel was responsible for the attacks of 9/11, or that the CentralIntelligence Agency killed President Kennedy, may well be responding quiterationally to the informational signals that they receive; in this sense, those beliefsmay well be justified from the standpoint of the individuals who hold them, evenif they are preposterous in light of the information available in the wider society.

Consider here the suggestive claim that terrorism is more likely to arise innations that lack civil rights and civil liberties.40 If this is so, it might be becauseterrorism is not abstract violence but an extreme form of political protest, andwhen people lack the usual outlets for registering their protest, they might resortto violence.41 But consider another possibility: when civil rights and civil libertiesare restricted, little information is available, and what comes from governmentcannot be trusted. If the most trustworthy or least untrustworthy informationjustifies conspiracy theories and (therefore) extremism, and (therefore?) violence,then terrorism is more likely to arise.

ii. Rumors and Speculation

Of course it is necessary to specify how, exactly, conspiracy theories begin. Somesuch theories seem to bubble up spontaneously, appearing roughlysimultaneously in many different social networks; others are initiated and spread,quite intentionally, by conspiracy entrepreneurs who profit directly or indirectlyfrom propagating their theories. One example in the latter category is the authorof the Chinese bestseller mentioned above;42 another is the French author ThierryMeyssan, whose book “9/11: The Big Lie” became a bestseller and a sensation forits claims that the Pentagon explosion on 9/11 was caused by a missile, fired asthe opening salvo of a coup d’etat by the military-industrial complex, rather thanby American Airlines Flight 77.43

Some conspiracy entrepreneurs are entirely sincere. Others are interested inmoney or power or in using the conspiracy theory to achieve some general socialgoal. In the context of the AIDS virus, for example, a diverse set of peopleinitiated rumors, many involving conspiracies, and in view of the confusion andfear surrounding that virus, several of those rumors spread widely.44 But even for

39Ibid. See also Baurmann, “Rational fundamentalism?” It is also true that many extremists havebecome extreme, or stayed extreme, after being exposed to a great deal of information on varioussides. Their refusal to change their views may or may not be justified, depending on the question andthe relevant information.

40See Krueger, What Makes a Terrorist? pp. 75–82.41Ibid., 89–90.42See McGregor, “Chinese buy into conspiracy theory.” Consider the author’s astonishing

statement: “This book may be totally wrong, so before I write the next one, I have to make sure myunderstanding is right.”

43See also James Fetzer, The 9/11 Conspiracy (Peru, Ill.: Catfeet Press, 2007) and MathiasBroeckers, Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of 9/11 (Joshua Tree, Calif.: ProgressivePress, 2006). The latter book sold over 100,000 copies in Germany.

44See Diane Goldstein, Once upon a Virus (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2004).


conspiracy theories put about by conspiracy entrepreneurs, the key question iswhy some theories take hold while many more do not, and vanish into obscurity.

Whenever a bad event has occurred, rumors and speculation are inevitable.Most people are not able to know, on the basis of personal or direct knowledge,why an airplane crashed, or why a leader was assassinated, or why a terroristattack succeeded, or why many people stayed in an area despite what turned outto be an imminent natural disaster. In the aftermath of such an event, numerousspeculations will be offered, and some of them will likely point to some kind ofconspiracy. To some people, those speculations will seem plausible, perhapsbecause they provide a suitable outlet for outrage and blame, perhaps because thespeculation fits well with other deeply rooted beliefs that they hold. Terribleevents produce outrage, and when people are outraged, they are all the morelikely to seek causes that justify their emotional states, and also to attributethose events to intentional action.45 Conspiracy theories, like rumors, maysimultaneously relieve “a primary emotional urge” and offer an explanation, tothose who accept the theory, of why they feel as they do; the theory “rationalizeswhile it relieves.”46

In addition, antecedent beliefs are a key to the success or failure of conspiracytheories. Within the United States, some people would find it impossibly jarringto think that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was responsible for theassassination of a civil rights leader; that thought would unsettle too many oftheir other judgments. Others would find those other judgments stronglysupported, even confirmed, by the suggestion that the CIA was responsible forsuch an assassination. Compare the case of terrorist attacks. For most Americans,a claim that the United States government attacked its own citizens, or condonedsuch attacks, would make it impossible to hold onto a wide range of otherjudgments. Clearly this point does not hold for many people in Islamic nations,for whom it is far from jarring to believe that responsibility lies with the UnitedStates (or Israel).

iii. Conspiracy Cascades: The Role of Information

To see how informational cascades work, imagine a group of people who aretrying to assign responsibility for some loss of life. Assume that the groupmembers are announcing their views in sequence. Each member attends,reasonably enough, to the judgments of others. Andrews is the first to speak. Hesuggests that the event was caused by a conspiracy of powerful people. Barnesnow knows Andrews’s judgment; she should certainly go along with Andrew’saccount if she agrees independently with him. But if her independent judgment isotherwise, she would—if she trusts Andrews no more and no less than she trustsherself—be indifferent about what to do, and she might simply flip a coin.

45See Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1957).46Allport and Postman, Psychology of Rumor, p. 503.


Now turn to a third person, Charleton. Suppose that both Andrews andBarnes have endorsed the conspiracy theory, but that Charleton’s own view,based on limited information, suggests that they are probably wrong. In thatevent, Charleton might well ignore what he knows and follow Andrews andBarnes. It is likely, after all, that both Andrews and Barnes had evidence for theirconclusion, and unless Charleton thinks that his own information is better thantheirs, he should follow their lead. If he does, Charleton is in a cascade. Of courseCharleton will resist if he has sufficient grounds to think that Andrews andBarnes are being foolish. But if he lacks those grounds, he is likely to go alongwith them. This may happen even if Andrews initially speculated in a way thatdoes not fit the facts. That initial speculation, in this example, can start a processby which a number of people are led to participate in a cascade, accepting aconspiracy theory whose factual foundations are fragile.

Of course the example is highly stylized; conspiracy cascades arise throughmore complex processes, in which diverse thresholds are crucial. In a standardpattern, the conspiracy theory is initially accepted by people with low thresholdsfor its acceptance. Perhaps the theory is limited, in its acceptance, to those withsuch thresholds. But sometimes the informational pressure builds, to the pointwhere many people, with somewhat higher thresholds, begin to accept the theorytoo. And when many people hold that belief, those with even higher thresholdsmay come to accept the theory, leading to widespread acceptance of falsehoods.In theory, a conspiracy theory might be justifiably held by many even though itis false and harmful, and even though only a few early movers suggested a strongcommitment to it. As a real-world example of a conspiracy cascade, consider theexistence of certain judgments about the origins and causes of AIDS, with somegroups believing, implausibly, that the virus was produced in governmentlaboratories.47 These and other views about AIDS are a product of socialinteractions, and in particular of cascade effects.

iv. Conspiracy Cascades: The Role of Reputation

Conspiracy theories do not take hold only because of information. Sometimespeople profess belief in a conspiracy theory, or at least suppress their doubts,because they seek to curry favor.48 Reputational pressures help account forconspiracy theories, and they feed conspiracy cascades. In a reputational cascade,people think that they know what is right, or what is likely to be right, but theynonetheless go along with the crowd in order to maintain the good opinion ofothers.

Suppose that Albert suggests that the Central Intelligence Agency wasresponsible for the assassination of President Kennedy, and that Barbara concurs

47See Fabio Lorenzi-Cioldi and Alain Clémence, “Group processes and the construction of socialrepresentations,” Group Processes, ed. Michael A. Hogg and R. Scott Tindale (Malden, Mass.:Blackwell Publishers, 2001), pp. 311–33 at pp. 315–17.

48For a vivid illustration in an analogous context, see Festinger, Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.


with Albert, not because she actually thinks that Albert is right, but because shedoes not wish to seem, to Albert, to be some kind of dupe. It should be easy tosee how this process might generate a cascade. Once Albert, Barbara, andCynthia offer a united front on the issue, their friend David might be reluctant tocontradict them even if he believes that they are wrong. In real-world conspiracytheories, reputational pressures often play a large role, leading people to squelchtheir own doubts in order to avoid social sanctions.

v. Conspiracy Cascades: The Role of Availability

Informational and reputational cascades can occur without any particulartriggering event. But a distinctive kind of cascade arises when such an event ishighly salient or cognitively “available.”49 In the context of many risks, such asthose associated with terrorism, nuclear power, and abandoned hazardous wastedumps, a particular event initiates a cascade, and it stands as a trigger or a symboljustifying public concern, whether or not that concern is warranted.50 Oftenpolitical actors, both self-interested and altruistic, work hard to produce suchcascades.

Conspiracy theories are often driven through the same mechanisms. Aparticular event becomes available,51 and conspiracy theories are invoked both inexplaining it and using it as a symbol for broader social forces and largenarratives about political life, casting doubt on accepted wisdom in manydomains. Within certain nations and groups, the claim that the United States orIsrael was responsible for the attacks of 9/11 fits well within a general narrativeabout who is the aggressor, and the liar, in a series of disputes—and the view thatAl Qaeda was responsible raises questions about that same narrative.

vi. Conspiracy Cascades: The Role of Emotions

Thus far our account has been purely cognitive: conspiracy theories circulate inthe same way that other beliefs circulate, as people give weight to the views ofothers and attend to their own reputations. But it is clear that affective factors,and not mere information, play a large role in the circulation of rumors of allkinds. Many rumors persist and spread because they serve to justify or torationalize an antecedent emotional state produced by some important event,such as a disaster or a war.52 When people are especially angry or fearful, they are

49In the context of race relations, rumors that amount to conspiracy theories have often had thisfeature, sometimes producing violence. See Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots.

50See Robert Repetto, ed., Punctuated Equilibrium and the Dynamics of U.S. EnvironmentalPolicy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein, “Availabilitycascades and risk regulation,” Stanford Law Review, 51 (1999), 683–768.

51See Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots.52See Allport and Postman, Psychology of Rumor, pp. 503–504; Festinger, Theory of Cognitive

Dissonance; Frederick Koenig, Rumor in the Market Place (Dover, Mass.: Auburn House, 1985),p. 33.


more likely to focus on particular sorts of rumors and to spread them to others.And when rumors trigger intense feelings, they are far more likely to becirculated.

Experimental evidence strongly supports this speculation in the analogouscontext of “urban legends.”53 When urban legends—involving, for example, adecapitated motorcycle rider, a rat in a soda bottle, or cat food mislabelled astuna—are devised so as to trigger strong emotions (such as disgust), people aremore likely to pass them along. Perhaps the most revealing of these experimentsinvolved actual spreading of urban legends on the Internet.54 The conclusion isthat in the marketplace of ideas, “emotional selection” plays a significant role,and it helps to explain such diverse phenomena as moral panics about deviantbehavior, hysteria about child abuse, and media attention to relatively smallsources of risk such as road rage and “flesh eating bacteria.”55 A particularproblem involves “emotional snowballing”—runaway selection for emotionalcontent rather than for information.56

The applications to conspiracy theories should not be obscure. When a terribleevent has occurred, acceptance of such theories may justify or rationalize theaffective state produced by that event; consider conspiracy theories in response topolitical assassinations.57 In addition, such theories typically involve accounts, orrumors, that create intense emotions, such as indignation, thus producing a kindof emotional selection that will spread beliefs from one person to another.58 Ofcourse evidence matters, and so long as there is some kind of process for meetingfalsehoods with truth, mistaken beliefs can be corrected. But sometimes theconditions for correction are not present.

vii. Group Polarization

There are clear links between cascades and the well-established phenomenon ofgroup polarization, by which members of a deliberating group typically end upin a more extreme position in line with their tendencies before deliberationbegan.59 Group polarization has been found in hundreds of studies involving overa dozen countries.60 Belief in conspiracy theories is often fueled by grouppolarization.61

Consider, as the clearest experimental example, the finding that those whodisapprove of the United States, and are suspicious of its intentions, will increase

53See Chip Heath, Chris Bell and Emily Sternberg, “Emotional selection in memes: the case ofurban legends,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81 (2001), 1028–41.

54Ibid., pp. 1037–9.55Ibid., p. 1039.56Ibid., p. 1040.57See Festinger, Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.58In the racial context, see Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots.59See Roger Brown, Social Psychology, 2nd edn (New York: Free Press, 1986), pp. 202–26.60See ibid., p. 204.61For a number of examples, see Jonathan Vankin, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes (New

York: Paragon House, 1991).


their disapproval and suspicion if they exchange points of view. There is specificevidence of this phenomenon among citizens of France: with respect to foreignaid, they trust the United States a great deal less, and suspect its intentions a greatdeal more, after they talk with one another.62 It should be easy to see how similareffects could occur for conspiracy theories. Those who tend to think that Israelwas responsible for the attacks of 9/11, and who speak with one another, will endup with a greater commitment to that belief.63 One result of group polarizationis that different groups may end up with radically different attitudes towardconspiracy theories in general and in particular. Speaking with like-mindedothers, some people may come to find such a theory irresistible and others maycome to find it preposterous.64

Group polarization occurs for reasons that parallel the mechanisms thatproduce cascades.65 Informational influences play a large role. In any group withsome initial inclination, the views of most people in the group will inevitably beskewed in the direction of that inclination. As a result of hearing the variousarguments, social interactions will lead people toward a more extreme point inline with what group members initially believed. Reputational factors matter aswell. Once people hear what others believe, some will adjust their positionsat least slightly in the direction of the dominant position. Relatedly, grouppolarization can occur through positional jockeying; if, for example, severalmembers of a group want to be the second-most-extreme supporter of the viewheld in common by the group, the distribution of views within the group can shiftto become more extreme overall.

For purposes of understanding the spread of conspiracy theories, it isespecially important to note that group polarization is particularly likely, andparticularly pronounced, when people have a shared sense of identity and areconnected by bonds of solidarity.66 These are circumstances in which argumentsby outsiders, unconnected with the group, will lack much credibility, and fail tohave much of an effect in reducing polarization.

viii. Selection Effects

A crippled epistemology can arise not only from informational and reputationaldynamics within a given group, but also from self-selection of members into andout of groups with extreme views.67 Once polarization occurs or cascades arise,and the group’s median view begins to move in a certain direction, doubters andhalfway-believers will tend to depart while intense believers remain. The overall

62Brown, Social Psychology, pp. 223–4.63See Glaeser and Sunstein, “Extremism and social learning.”64See the racial disparities catalogues in Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots.65See ibid., pp. 212–22, 226–45; Robert S. Baron and Norbert L. Kerr, Group Processes, Group

Decision, Group Action, 2nd edn (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 2001), p. 540.66See Cass R. Sunstein, Why Societies Need Dissent (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,

2003).67Hardin, “The crippled epistemology of extremism,” pp. 9–12.


size of the group may shrink, but the group may also pick up new believers whoare even more committed, and in any event the remaining members will, byself-selection, display more fanaticism. Group members may engage in a kind ofdouble-think, segregating themselves, in a physical or informational sense, inorder to protect their beliefs from challenge by outsiders.68 Even if the rank andfile cannot coherently do this, group leaders may enforce segregation in order toinsulate the rank and file from information or arguments that would underminethe leaders’ hold on the group. As a result, group polarization will likely intensify.

Members of informationally and socially isolated groups become increasinglydistrustful or suspicious of the motives of others or of the larger society, fallinginto a “sinister attribution error.”69 This error occurs when people feel that theyare under pervasive scrutiny, and hence they attribute personalistic motives tooutsiders and overestimate the amount of attention they receive. Benign actionsthat happen to disadvantage the group are taken as purposeful plots, intended toharm.70 Although these conditions resemble individual-level pathologies such asparanoid cognition, they arise from the social and informational structure of thegroup, especially those operating in enclosed or closely knit networks, and arenot usefully understood as a form of mental illness, not even in a metaphoricalsense.

II. GOVERNMENTAL RESPONSES

What can the government do about conspiracy theories, and what should it do?(1) Government might ban “conspiracy theories”, somehow defined. (2)Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those whodisseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech,marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government mightformally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Governmentmight engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them tohelp. Each instrument has a distinctive set of potential effects, or costs andbenefits, and each will have a place under imaginable conditions. Our mainpolicy claim here is that government should engage in cognitive infiltration of thegroups that produce conspiracy theories, which involves a mix of (3), (4), and (5).

The first-line response to conspiracy theories is to maintain an open society, inwhich those who might be tempted to subscribe to such theories are unlikely todistrust all knowledge-creating institutions, and are exposed to evidence andcorrections. Nongovernmental organizations, including the media, can and dowork hard to respond to such theories. As an ambitious example, consider anInternet site, www.snopes.com, which researches rumors and conspiracy theories

68Ibid., p.10.69Roderick M. Kramer, “The sinister attribution error: paranoid cognition and collective distrust

in organizations,” Motivation and Emotion, 18 (1994), 199–230.70Ibid.


http://www.snopes.com

and reports on their truth or falsity. (Another is www.counterknowledge.com).For those concerned about the proliferation of conspiracy theorizing on theInternet, this site provides a reliable and helpful reality check. It would be easy toimagine other ventures, small and large, in this vein, for the Internet provides notonly a mechanism by which to spread conspiracy theories, but also a range ofcorrective tools. The more general point is that in free societies, conspiracytheories are generally dislodged by the media and other non-governmental actors.

But we have seen that even in open societies, conspiracy theories have sometraction.71 The Internet itself has ambiguous effects; it is no panacea, even if it isentirely free. Reduced information costs may make it easier for private monitorsto rebut conspiracy theories,72 yet by the same token that very reduction ininformation costs also makes it easier for conspiracy theorists to generate andspread their theories in the first place. The overall effect of new technology isunclear, as is the ability of nongovernmental monitors to police conspiracytheories. In part because this is so, an official response will sometimes beessential, at least in important cases. And in all cases, the government mustnecessarily decide whether to deny, confirm, or ignore conspiracy theories thatcome to the attention of officials.

Here we suggest two concrete ideas for government officials attempting tofashion a response to such theories. First, responding to more rather than fewerconspiracy theories has a kind of synergy benefit: it reduces the legitimating effectof responding to any one of them, because it dilutes the contrast with unrebuttedtheories. Second, we suggest a distinctive tactic for breaking up the hard core ofextremists who supply conspiracy theories: cognitive infiltration of extremistgroups, whereby government agents or their allies (acting either virtually or inreal space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippledepistemology of believers by planting doubts about the theories and stylized factsthat circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitivediversity.

Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminateconspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improvedby doing so. (We do not offer a particular account of social welfare, taking theterm instead as a placeholder for the right account.) This is a standardassumption in policy analysis, although real-world governments can themselvesbe purveyors of conspiracy theories, as when the Bush administration suggestedthat Saddam Hussein had conspired with Al Qaeda to support the 9/11 attacks.73

71A range of examples can be found in Vankin, Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes and Knopf,Rumors, Race and Riots.

72As argued in Steve Clarke, “Conspiracy theories and the internet: controlled demolition andarrested development,” Episteme 4 (2007), 77–92.

73See, e.g., Frank Rich, “Editorial: dishonest, reprehensible, corrupt,” New York Times, Nov. 27,2005, p. 11.


http://www.counterknowledge.com

A. ARE CONSPIRACY THEORIES CONSEQUENTIAL?

One line of thinking denies that conspiracy theories matter.74 There are severalpossible reasons to think so. First, conspiracy theories may be held by only a tinyfraction of the relevant population. Second, even if a particular conspiracy theoryis widely held in the sense that many people will confess to it when polled,conspiracy theories may be held as “quasi-beliefs”—beliefs that are not costlyand possibly even fun to hold, like a belief in UFOs, and that do not form apremise for action.75 Perhaps those who seem to accept such theories have “soft”beliefs, in a way that leads them generally to keep quiet, and rarely to act on whatthey tend to think.

It is true that many people do not in fact take any action on the basis of theirmistaken beliefs. But in the racial context, a belief in conspiracies has oftenplayed a significant role in producing violence; conspiracy theories have had largeeffects on behavior.76 And even if only a small fraction of adherents to a particularconspiracy theory act on the basis of their beliefs, that small fraction may beenough to cause serious harms. Consider the Oklahoma City bombing, whoseperpetrators shared a complex of conspiratorial beliefs about the federalgovernment. Many who shared their beliefs did not act on them, but a few actorsdid, with terrifying consequences. James Fearon and others argue thattechnological change has driven down the costs of delivering attacks withweapons of mass destruction, to the point where even a small group can pose asignificant threat.77 If so, and if only a tiny fraction of believers act on theirbeliefs, then as the total population with conspiratorial beliefs grows, it becomesnearly inevitable that action will ensue.

In other, perhaps more common, cases the conspiracy theory will be of adifferent nature and will not directly produce such action. However, such theoriescan still have pernicious effects from the government’s point of view, either byinducing unjustifiably widespread public skepticism about the government’sassertions, or by dampening public mobilization and participation ingovernment-led efforts, or both.

B. DILEMMAS AND RESPONSES

Imagine a government facing a population in which a particular conspiracytheory is becoming widespread. We will identify two basic dilemmas that recur,

74See Clarke, “Conspiracy theories and the internet,” p. 91 (noting that “few [conspiracy theories]are actually harmful”).

75Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); BryanCaplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).

76See Knopf, Rumors, Race and Riots. In the international context, conspiracy theoriesundoubtedly play a role in reputational cascades. See Timur Kuran, “Ethnic norms and theirtransformation through reputational cascades,” Journal of Legal Studies, 27 (1998), 623–60.

77James D. Fearon, “Catastrophic terrorism and civil liberties,” ⟨http://www.stanford.edu/~jfearon/papers/civlibs.doc⟩.


http://www

and consider how government should respond. The first dilemma is whether toignore or rebut the theory; the second is whether to address the supply side ofconspiracy theorizing by attempting to debias or disable its purveyors, to addressthe demand side by attempting to immunize third-party audiences from thetheory’s effects, or to do both (if resource constraints permit).

In both cases, the underlying structure of the problem is that conspiracytheorizing is a multi-party game. Government is faced with suppliers ofconspiracy theories, and might aim at least in part to persuade, debias, or silencethose suppliers. However, those two players are competing for the hearts andminds of third parties, especially the mass audience of the uncommitted.78

Expanding the cast further, one may see the game as involving four players:government officials, conspiracy theorists, mass audiences, and independentexperts—such as mainstream scientists—whom government attempts to enlist togive credibility to its rebuttal efforts.

i. Ignore or Rebut?

The first dilemma is that either ignoring or rebutting a conspiracy theory hasdistinctive risks and costs.79 Ignoring the theory allows its proponents to drawominous inferences from the government’s silence. If the theory standsunrebutted, people may pay less attention to it, and even when they notice it, anatural inference from the government’s silence is that the theory is too ludicrousto need rebuttal. But another possibility is that the government is silent becauseit cannot offer relevant evidence to the contrary. The suppliers of the conspiracytheories will propose the second inference. On this view, all misinformation (theinitial conspiracy theory) should be met with countermisinformation.

On the other hand, to rebut the theory may be to legitimate it, moving thetheory from the zone of claims too ludicrous to be discussed to the zone of claimsthat, whether or not true, are in some sense worth discussing. This legitimationeffect can arise in one of two ways. First of all, third-party audiences may inferfrom the government’s rebuttal efforts that the government itself estimatesthe conspiracy theory to be plausible and fears that the third parties will bepersuaded. Here one risk is that the very act of rebuttal squarely focuses theaudience on the conspiracy theory itself, in a way that may increase its salienceand also its plausibility. Those who might reject the theory, or in any case notthink about it, may take the rebuttal as a reason to give it serious consideration.

A second possible source of the legitimation effect is that some members of theaudience may infer that many other members of the audience must believe theconspiracy theory, or government would not be taking the trouble to rebut it.

78For relevant discussion, see Glaeser, The Political Economy of Hatred.79For discussion of the somewhat analogous problem whether firms or governments should deny

and rebut circulating rumors, or instead ignore them, see DiFonzo and Bordia, Rumor Psychology,ch. 9. The problems are not identical, because rumor is only one mechanism by which conspiracytheories may arise and spread.


Consider circumstances of “pluralistic ignorance,” in which citizens are unsurewhat other citizens believe.80 Citizens may take the fact of rebuttal itself assupplying information about the beliefs of other citizens, and may even use thisinformation in forming their own beliefs. If the number who follow this cognitivestrategy and thus adopt a belief in the conspiracy theory exceeds the number whoare persuaded by the rebuttal, the perverse result of the rebuttal may then be toincrease the number of believers.

In a typical pattern, government plays a wait-and-see strategy: ignore theconspiracy theory until it reaches some ill-defined threshold level of widespreadpopularity, and then rebut. There is a straightforward logic to this strategy. Whenthe government ignores the theory, either the relevant audiences will draw aninference that the theory is silly, or else will infer that the government cannoteffectively deny it. If the conspiracy theory does not spread despite thegovernment’s silence, the former inference is probably dominant, and response isunnecessary. There is also an option value to the strategy of ignoring the theory:a public rebuttal now is costly or impossible to undo, but maintaining silencenow leaves government with the option to rebut later, if it chooses to do so.Finally and most generally, it seems silly and infeasible to chase after and rebutevery conspiracy theory that comes to government’s attention.

However, the concern that rebuttal will inadvertently legitimate a conspiracytheory overlooks an important synergistic gain: rebutting many conspiracytheories can reduce the legitimating effect of rebutting any one of them. Whengovernment rebuts a particular theory while ignoring most others, thelegitimating effect arises at least in part because of a contrast between theforeground and the background: the inference is that government has picked thetheory it is rebutting out of the larger set because this theory, unlike the others,is inherently plausible or is gaining traction among some sectors of the massaudience. The more theories government rebuts, the weaker is the implicitlegitimating signal sent by the very fact of rebuttal.

It is impossible to say, in the abstract, how great this synergistic gain may be.However, the implication is that government should rebut more conspiracytheories than it would otherwise choose, if assessing the expected costs andbenefits of rebuttal on a theory-by-theory basis. Because of synergy effects,government action considered over an array or range of cases may have differenttotal costs and benefits than when those cases are considered one by one.

ii. Which Audience?

Should governmental responses be addressed to the suppliers, with a view topersuading or silencing them, or rather be addressed to the mass audience, witha view to inoculating them from pernicious theories? Of course these twostrategies are not mutually exclusive; perhaps the best approach is to straddle the

80See Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies.


two audiences with a single response or simply to provide multiple responses.However, if there are resource constraints or intrinsic tradeoffs, such that thearguments that appeal to one audience tend to alienate the other, government willface a choice about what mix of responses is optimal

The basic problem with pitching governmental responses to the suppliers ofconspiracy theories is that, as we have noted, those theories have a self-sealingquality. They are (1) resistant and in extreme cases invulnerable to contraryevidence,81 and (2) especially resistant to contrary evidence offered by thegovernment, because the government rebuttal is folded into the conspiracy theoryitself. If conspiracy theorists are responding to the informational signals given bythose whom they trust, then the government’s effort at rebuttal seems unlikely tobe effective, and might serve to fortify rather than to undermine the originalbelief. After 9/11, one complex of conspiracy theories involved American AirlinesFlight 77, which hijackers crashed into the Pentagon. Even those conspiracistswho were persuaded that the Flight 77 conspiracy theories were wrong foldedthat view into a larger conspiracy theory. The problem with the theory that noplane hit the Pentagon, they said, is that the theory was too transparently false,disproved by multiple witnesses and much physical evidence. Thus the theorymust have been a straw man initially planted by the government, in order todiscredit other conspiracy theories and theorists by association.82

Government can partially circumvent these problems if it enlists credibleindependent experts in the effort to rebut the theories. There is a tradeoff betweencredibility and control, however. The price of credibility is that governmentcannot be seen to control the independent experts. Although government cansupply these independent experts with information and perhaps prod them intoaction from behind the scenes, too close a connection will prove self-defeatingif it is exposed—as witnessed in the humiliating disclosures showing thatapparently independent opinions on scientific and regulatory questions were infact paid for by think-tanks with ties to the Bush administration.83 Even apartfrom this tradeoff, conspiracy theorists may still fold independent third-partyrebuttals into their theory by making conspiratorial claims of connection betweenthe third party and the government. When the magazine Popular Mechanicsoffered a rebuttal of 9/11 conspiracy theories, conspiracists claimed that one ofthe magazine’s reporters, Ben Chertoff, was the cousin of Homeland SecuritySecretary Michael Chertoff and was spreading disinformation at the latter’sbehest.84

81Cf. Festinger, Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.82See, e.g., Jim Hoffman, “Video of the Pentagon attack: what is the government hiding,”

⟨http://911research.com/essays/pentagon/video.html⟩.83See Ian Sample, “Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study,” Guardian, Feb. 2, 2007, p. 1

(noting that a “thinktank with close links to the Bush administration” had paid scientists to challengea report on global warming).

84In fact, the two may be distant relatives, but had never met. Will Sullivan, “Viewing 9/11 froma grassy knoll,” U.S. News & World Report, Sept. 11, 2006.


http://911research.com/essays/pentagon/video.html%E2%8C%AA

Because of these difficulties, many officials dismiss direct responses to thesuppliers of conspiracy theorists as an exercise in futility. Those with strongcommitments often engage in “biased assimilation” of evidence,85 and conspiracytheorists are likely to be especially biased assimilators. Thus officials address theirresponses to the third-party mass audience, hoping to stem the spread ofconspiracy theories by dampening the demand rather than by reducing thesupply. When the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a factsheet to disprove the theory that the World Trade Center was brought down bya controlled demolition, the government spokesman stated that “[w]e realize thisfact sheet won’t convince those who hold to the alternative theories that ourfindings are sound. In fact, the fact sheet was never intended for them. It is for themasses who have seen or heard the alternative theory claims and want balance.”86

The problem with this line of argument, however, is that there are intrinsiccosts to the strategy of giving up on the hard core of conspiracy theorists anddirecting government efforts solely towards inoculating the mass audience. Forone thing, the hard core may itself provide the most serious threat. For another,a response geared to a mass audience (whether or not nominally pitched as aresponse to the conspiracy theorists) will lead some to embrace rather than rejectthe conspiracy theory the government is trying to rebut. This is the legitimationdilemma again: to begin a program of inoculation is to signal that the disease isalready widespread and threatening. Under pluralistic ignorance, the perverseresult may actually be to spread the conspiracy theory further.

iii. Cognitive Infiltration and Persuasion

Rather than taking the continued existence of the hard core as a constraint, andaddressing itself solely to the third-party mass audience, government mightundertake (legal) tactics for breaking up the tight cognitive clusters of extremisttheories, arguments and rhetoric that are produced by the hard core and reinforceit in turn. One potentially promising tactic is cognitive infiltration of extremistgroups. By this we do not mean 1960s-style infiltration with a view tosurveillance and collecting information, possibly for use in future prosecutions.Rather, we mean that government efforts might succeed in weakening or evenbreaking up the epistemological complexes that constitute these networks andgroups.

Recall that extremist networks and groups, including the groups that purveyconspiracy theories, typically suffer from a kind of crippled epistemology. Wesuggest a role for government efforts, and agents, in introducing cognitivediversity. Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, onlinesocial networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating

85For evidence of why this might be so, see Charles G. Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper,“Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: the effects of prior theories on subsequentlyconsidered evidence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37 (1979), 2098–109.

86Jim Dwyer, “U.S. counters 9/11 theories of conspiracy,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2006, p. B1.


conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic,or implications for action, political or otherwise.

In one variant, government agents would openly proclaim, or at least makeno effort to conceal, their institutional affiliations. A recent newspaper storyrecounts that Arabic-speaking Muslim officials from the State Department haveparticipated in dialogues at radical Islamist chat rooms and websites in order toventilate arguments not usually heard among the groups that cluster aroundthose sites, with some success.87 In another variant, government officials wouldparticipate anonymously or even with false identities. Each approach has distinctcosts and benefits; the second risks perverse results but potentially brings higherreturns.

In the former case, where government officials participate openly assuch, hard-core members of the relevant networks, communities, andconspiracy-minded organizations may entirely discount what the officials say,right from the beginning. Because conspiracy theorists are likely to approachevidence and arguments in a biased way,88 they are not likely to respond well, oreven logically, to the claims of public officials. Of course government agents offerarguments and evidence against the conspiracy theory; perhaps their efforts aremerely additional proof that the theory is correct. But the self-sealing quality ofconspiracy theories (we should emphasize) is a matter of degree. Those who holdsuch theories may not be totally impervious to contrary evidence, even if it comesfrom those who are thought to have a stake in persuasion.

The risk with tactics of anonymous participation is that those tactics may bediscovered or disclosed, with possibly perverse results. If the tactic becomesknown, the conspiracy theory may become further entrenched, and any genuinemember of the relevant groups who raises doubts may be suspected ofgovernment connections. And as we have emphasized throughout, in an opensociety it is difficult to conceal government conspiracies, even the sort ofconspiratorial tactic we have suggested, whose aim is to undermine false andharmful conspiracy theorizing.

If disclosure of the tactic does occur, however, the perverse results are just apossible cost, whose risk and magnitude is unclear. Another possibility is thatdisclosure of the government’s tactics will sow uncertainty and distrust withinconspiratorial groups and among their members; new recruits will be suspect andparticipants in the group’s virtual networks will doubt each other’s bona fides. Tothe extent that these effects raise the costs of organization and communicationfor, and within, conspiratorial groups, the effects are desirable, not perverse.(And both sets of effects might occur simultaneously). So the two forms of

87Neil MacFarquhar, “At State Dept., blog team joins Muslim debate,” New York Times, Sept. 22,2007, p. A1.

88Cf. Lord et al., “Biased assimilation and attitude polarization” (showing biased assimilation onthe part of those with strong political commitments).


cognitive infiltration offer evidently different risk-reward mixes. And despite thedangers, both are potentially useful instruments.

There is a similar tradeoff along another dimension: whether the infiltrationshould occur in the real world, through physical penetration of conspiracistgroups by undercover agents, or instead should occur strictly in cyberspace. Thelatter is safer, but potentially less productive. The former will sometimes beindispensable, where the groups that purvey conspiracy theories (and perhapsthemselves formulate conspiracies) formulate their views through real-spaceinformational networks rather than virtual networks. Infiltration of any kindposes well-known risks: Perhaps agents will be asked to perform criminal acts toprove their bona fides, or (less plausibly) will themselves become persuaded bythe conspiratorial views they are supposed to be undermining; perhaps agentswill be unmasked and harmed by the infiltrated group. But the risks are generallygreater for real-world infiltration, where the agent is exposed to more seriousharms. Our main suggestion is just that, whatever the tactical details, there wouldseem to be ample reason for government efforts to introduce some cognitivediversity into the groups that generate conspiracy theories.89

CONCLUSION

Our goal here has been to understand the sources of false and harmful conspiracytheories and to examine potential government responses. Most people lack director personal information about the explanations for terrible events, and they areoften tempted to attribute such events to some nefarious actor, in part because oftheir outrage. The temptation is least likely to be resisted if others are making thesame attributions. Conspiracy cascades arise through the same processes that fuelmany kinds of social errors. What makes such cascades most distinctive, andrelevantly different from other cascades involving beliefs that are also both falseand harmful, is their self-insulating quality. The very statements and facts thatmight dissolve conspiracy cascades can be taken as further evidence on theirbehalf. These points make it especially difficult for outsiders, includinggovernments, to debunk them.

Some false conspiracy theories create serious risks. They do not merelyundermine democratic debate; in extreme cases, they create or fuel violence. Ifgovernment can dispel such theories, it should do so. One problem is that itsefforts might be counterproductive, because efforts to rebut conspiracy theories

89There are also hard questions about how, exactly, to introduce cognitive diversity into a groupof people strongly committed to a conspiracy theory. Although our claims do not depend upon thetactical details, we note a growing body of research indicating that if the goal is to dislodge aparticular belief of an individual or group, the best approach is to begin by affirming other beliefs, orat least the competence and character, of that individual or group. See the overview in David K.Sherman and Geoffrey Cohen, “The psychology of self-defense: self-affirmation theory,” Advances inExperimental Social Psychology, 38 (2006), 183–342.


also legitimate them. We have suggested, however, that government can minimizethis effect by rebutting more rather than fewer theories, by enlisting independentgroups to supply rebuttals, and by cognitive infiltration designed to break upthe crippled epistemology of conspiracy-minded groups and informationallyisolated social networks.


conspiracy theories: causes and cures* - skeptiker schweiz · pragmatically, that a conspiracy...

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